Verizon Wireless announced Monday it will pay a dividend of $8.5 billion to owners Verizon Communications and Britain’s Vodafone Group PLC, by the end of the year.

Together with an earlier dividend paid in January, an extremely profitable Verizon Wireless will return a combined $18.5 billion to investors in 2012.

Verizon Communications, owner of Verizon landlines and fiber optic network FiOS, owns 55 percent of the wireless operation. Britain-based Vodafone Group owns a 45 percent minority interest. Verizon Wireless, like many U.S. corporations, has used excess cash to pay down or refinance debt at historically low interest rates, reacquire stock, or pay dividends to shareholders in lieu of major infrastructure and hiring expansion.

Verizon Communications needs its share of the wireless dividend to help cover dividend payouts to its own wired shareholders. Verizon Communications has been unable to command the kind of high profit margins its wireless counterpart has succeeded in delivering to investors.